I figured it must not have been many markets. It's still not that much for 16 markets. Scandinavia is rocking. Norway has a population of 5m, Sweden 10m and they are not that far off from Germany (80m) and France (65m) in terms of gross.

Not good so far.

I'm expecting big numbers here in Australia - certainly Top 3 of the year (perhaps 2nd behind Avengers).

The numbers are only for few markets over a weekday. I was also expecting a little more but there is nothing to raise alarms yet.

I think we can forget about $1 B overseas. Hobbit is clearly not LOTR.

The thing is that admissions are down but it can still go up over weekends. The only concern is the WOM they really needed something special with this one and Jackson didn't realize what audience wanted was swords and scandal, not the continuous (political) connections to LOTR.

I think it's going to have pretty great WOM, actually. My crowd went nuts for it.

Looks like:
5 day opening (admissions)
2,239,684 LOTR1
2,634,701 LOTR2
2,666,776 LOTR3
1,225,000 Hobbit

Here's how the LOTR movies did:
http://www.insidekino.com/Y/YDuellPeter ... .htm#DUELL DEUTSCHLAND

Mark, is insidekino your site?

Yes...

Oh, nothing really, I just wanted to know. Well done. It's a great site. Very easy to use, even for someone with limited German ability.

Thanks!

Wow, horrible.

Based on preliminary numbers, this could struggle to make $600m OS.

Hobbit opens a week earlier than the LOTR movies (at least in Germany), so this should help its legs...

I think that's a screwup of John Carter proportions in terms of marketing. That's the only explanation i have for the low openings all across the world.

But it's not all across the world. The Scandanavian openings are very solid (considering ROTK made like, $1.7 million over its opening weekend in Norway), and it's still got a ton of territories to open in. Let's not forget that this is just a normal Wednesday too, and doesn't necessarily predict bad things for the upcoming weekend.

Okay, "pretty much" across the world.

The Wednesdays LOTR opened on were normal as well. We already have a good ballpark for Germany and it doesn't look to fare better in the majority of markets based on Wed numbers and presales.

Italy

OD:€0.650m

ROTK:€1.3m

$29.6m Friday and $57m OS total as of Friday

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey continues to dominate with $29.6m from 18,200 screens in 56 markets, for a running tally of $57m.

Top Territories: UK – 70% market share. £2.5m (US$4.1m) from 601 situations. The running cume is now £4.6m (US$7.4m).
Germany – Friday pulled in €2.4m (US$3.1m) from 1,332 screens with a 63% market share, bringing the running cume to €5.5m (US$7.1m).
Spain – €1.8m (US$2.4m) from 1,052 screens, taking 72% share of the market. France – €1.5m (US$1.9m) with 200k admissions from 958 screens, bringing the 3 day cume to €4.3m (US$5.5m) with 577k admissions.
Brazil – excellent #'s at R$3.2m (US$1.5m) from 969 screens, taking 61% market share.
Korea – Friday numbers continue to be outstanding, coming in at KRW 1.6b (US$1.5m) from 1,200 screens, ranking a strong #1. The 2 day running cume is now KRW 2.9b (US$2.7m).
Mexico – fantastic Ps.18m (US$1.4m) from 2,414 screens, dominating the market with a 66% box office share and ranking as the best opening day ever in December.

It has like 3 big and 3 medium size markets to open. This movie might need some good legs to reach 600M Intl.

Let's say it does $140m OS for the weekend, even with China, Russia and Australia still pending, it's a long way till $600m.

I don't understand why it's having so much trouble overseas. The negative buzz wasn't THAT negative... was it?

It's doing fine, it's just not doing numbers people expected.

There is no reason for it to be doing even worse than FotR. I really can't see any logical explanation other than the negative pre-release buzz and the bad reviews.

It'll probably do as much as FOTR, maybe slightly more.

Hype was just not as big among the general audience as anticipated. They weren't salivating to get back to Middle Earth for a dwarven centric story with a lighter touch. A better marketing campaign wouldn't have hurt, either.

This will still play very well through Christmas. I'm calling at least $650 million overseas.